Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Fitting Maserati air horns ?

I have just found some nice old Maserati air horns that I had forgotten I even had. I think they must date from the late 60's or 70's. I have given them a clean up and they are working perfectly (pretty loud).

I'm thinking of fitting them to my Plus 4, what do you think.

I have a couple of questions:

Do the latest cars have a relay fitted to the horn circuit?

Is the horn circuit made with the earth or the live? Havn't poked around in there yet today, it's too cold now in the garage.

Anyone else done this and where did you mount them? I was thinking of putting the horns below the near side wing, I think the off side would be too hot for the plastic with the exhaust manifold in there. The compressor would fit nicely by the washer fluid bottle and I have access to a live feed for the relay near by on the starter motor. Probably will leave the puny original fitment item on there as well.

Wonderful things those airhorns. I think they would be Fiamm Road Master horns. The '67 Quattroporte had two horn circuits: town and country. I think the airhorns were on the steering wheel and the small electric horn was on the button on the end of the indicator stalk. The steering wheel was a work of art, it is "signed" and could very well be a Motolita, but I don't recall. The centre horn button is also connected to arms behind the wheel that have matching wooden tabs in the spokes of the wheel. In other words you can press the tabs in the spokes or the centre button to actuate the horn.



The trumpets can be tuned to give the desired high/low tone by loosening the locking nut and screwing them in or out a fraction. You may need to put a little light oil to lubricate the air pump. If it is the same as mine was there is an oiling point covered by a cap. The pump is mounted vertically, I think the oiling point would be at the top.

You can still buy the same make of airhorn today but they are plastic. It may be worthwhile running a circuit with a switch so that you can have the original horn around town and the airhorns out on the highway. I suspect the Maserati system with the button on the end of the indicator stalk, whilst not impossible, might be too difficult.

I am reasonably sure that a relay was used as the pump draws a fair bit of power.

If you need I could ask the present owner for more information.

Use a relay. Check your horn push but on mine, there is a single wire to earth, so earth switched.

Hi Dave
If it's earth switched not live switched, I assume that I need a different type of relay (normally the relay is switched with the live) not the earth.

No, you can use the same relay.

If earth switched you wire the relay coil to the live side of the horn switch - so from +12V supply, to relay coil, from relay coil to horn switch, to earth.

If live switched, you put the relay on the earth side of the horn switch. Don't think I need to spell that one out

I removed the cheapo air horns from RTA and fitted some Fiamm bike horns as fitted to BMW, Guzzi etc. The air horns were pretty naff TBH so a return to a pair of good 'old fashioned' loud twintone horns is a nice change. Much of the original wiring was still in existence, but I replaced the horn wiring from bulkhead forward, including fitting a relay on the bulkhead. My car is much older of course!

Cheers,

As Graham said. I had a switchover switch on my MGB so I could do Town & Country, but I would have to draw the circuit to remember exactly how I did it!!! That was earth switched.